PINEHURST, N.C.—There were no punches pulled by the coaches on Monday at the ACC Football Kickoff.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive created a stir at his conference’s media gathering when he proposed sweeping changes, including raising the minimum GPA for recruits from 2.0 to 2.5, handing out multi-year scholarships instead of the current year-by-year scholarships and including a cost-of-attendance stipend with full-ride athletic scholarships.

ACC commissioner John Swofford addressed those topics on Sunday at the Kickoff, but not with nearly the enthusiasm or opinion with which his conference’s coaches did on Monday.

Maryland coach Randy Edsall, on the multi-year scholarship idea: “Dead set against it.”

Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, on cost-of-attendance increase: “I’m all for giving kids more funds, but it has to be the same across the board, whichever school they go to.”

And then Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher, who shared Swinney’s general thought on the idea of bumping up the minimum GPA, said there were more pressing issues for college football commissioners to deal with than GPAs and the length of scholarships: “Go fix what’s wrong.”

Their problem with the multi-year scholarships, as explained by Edsall and others, is that they take away some accountability and responsibility from the players. Plus, with the one-year renewable system in place, coaches said, multi-year scholarships are unnecessary.

“Unless they quit the team, flunk out of school or get in trouble with the law in some way or fail the drug-testing system, there are no issues,” Edsall said. “I don’t understand the rationale of why they would want to propose that.”

Their problem with the idea of cost-of-attendance increase isn’t with the idea of giving more money, but the way it would potentially be distributed. The cost of attendance in a place like Stanford, for example, could be deemed higher than the cost of attendance in a place like Blacksburg, Virginia, home of Beamer’s Hokies. And if a recruit knows he’d get more cost-of-attendance money somewhere, that’s another recruiting edge. No coach is going to be OK with giving up even the most miniscule recruiting edge.

Their problems with raising the minimum GPA are numerous. High school athletes who start slowly grades-wise in high school can raise their GPA to the 2.0 level the last two years to gain eligibility, but bumping it up to a 2.5 would be significantly tougher. “If they make mistakes in the classroom as freshmen in high school, now they’re going to be punished in college?” Swinney said. “I have a real problem with that.”

You get the idea. Change might be coming to college football, but there will be significant resistance on the front lines.

Edsall not bemoaning his limitations

Edsall inherited minor NCAA issues when he took over at Maryland—he’s down a few scholarships and dealing with practice-time reductions for things that happened when Ralph Friedgen was head coach—but you won’t catch him bemoaning his situation.

“I helped start the (Jacksonville) Jaguars from scratch, then I went to UConn and did what I did there,” Edsall said, “so this has been a breeze.”

The Terps won nine games last year and return Danny O’Brien, a sophomore quarterback who threw for 2,438 yards and 22 touchdowns last fall. It would seem the reduced practice times could be a hindrance for a new coach trying to install his own schemes, but again, that’s not how he sees it.

“It’s not going to be an issue at all because we’re not going to let it be an issue,” he said. “I put together a schedule that allows us to be successful with what we’re doing.”

Swinney feeling the pressure in year three

Dabo Swinney, in his third full season as Clemson’s head coach, is under a little pressure.

After winning nine games in 2009, his Tigers only won six last season, in large part because of offensive struggles.

So this offseason, Swinney brought in Chad Morris, a well-thought-of assistant from Tulsa, to be his new offensive coordinator.

“It’s been a real easy transition for us this spring because we have similar schemes,” Swinney said. “Coach Morris was blown away by that, really. It’s the same old cat, just a different way to skin it.”